China Name H20 is in danger, and enterprises are called to stop purchasing

The Chinese government recently called on local enterprises to avoid adopting NVIDIA (Nvidia) H20, especially in government-related application areas. This may further impact on the U.S. government's NVIDIA and Ultramicro (AMD) that are just re-approved for sale in China and require 15% of the relevant operations to be charged.

According to people familiar with the matter, the Chinese authorities have issued notices to several companies over the past few weeks that it is not recommended to use this type of lower-level semiconductor, and it has clearly emphasized that H20 should not be used in state-owned enterprises or private companies for any project involving government or national security, because of concerns about the risk of "back door". In addition to NVIDIA, Beijing's relevant measures also affect Ultramicro's AI accelerators, but it is not clear whether there are files with names that mention AMD's MI308 chips.

The "Yujingtian" under the China National Media Central Television published an article on the 10th, pointing out that the NVIDIA H20 chip has the ability to "far-close" and can automatically stop operating through setting voltage, fixed time and other conditions. The article even bluntly stated that the H20 chip is "neither environmentally friendly, nor advanced, nor safe", and calls Chinese manufacturers as consumers to choose "not buy", further highlighting the official strong reminder attitude.

Industry analysis believes that the core purpose of this is to reduce the dependence on Western chips, and to support the local supply chain and domestic AI chip market share, which is expected to benefit directly from domestic leading companies such as China.

Although this measure is not mandatory, it is expected that NVIDIA and Ultramicro will decline in sales in China. However, the market also pays attention to whether NVIDIA will launch a "blank Blackwell" product that has been reduced in regulations as an alternative to maintaining business in the Chinese market.

China Urges Firms Not to Use Nvidia H20 Chips in New Guidance